AMORAL: Interview with Ben Varon for Rock. Nothing But...webzine

Jonathan Newsome of Rock. Nothing But...webzine conducted an interview with Amoral guitarist Ben Varon. Below are couple of excerpts:

"We are very pleased to have with us today, a founding member of the band; Ben Varon, lead guitarist for Amoral. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. We welcome you to the Rock. Nothing But…Family. We’ve got a few questions for ya today, let’s get right to it. Let’s talk about about the new album, Beneath. Tell us a bit about the upcoming release.

Ben: Beneath is by far the most ambitious project we’ve taken on so far. We entered the studio with the intention of recording pretty much two albums’ worth of material, about 70 minutes of music. And this was after the pre-production and losing the b-quality ideas, meaning all 14 tracks sounded killer to us and we put 100% into each one, not knowing exactly which would make it to the album. The rest would be used as bonus tracks.

Ben: The idea was to make a big, classic-sounding album that flows through many different moods, styles, genres… like many of our favorite albums from the early 90′s, and of course from the heydays of classic rock and prog rock. So on Beneath, you have big, epic-y long tracks at the beginning and end of the album, a few hard rock-oriented catchy tunes, some acoustic stuff etc. We’d like to think that as a whole it still makes sense, but that is of course for the listener to decide.

The first US single is titled Same Difference. In your own words; what is this song about?

Ben: The song is about ignorance, arrogance and inherited stupidity. Like everyone, we’ve seen our share of close-minded people. Especially touring, you end up at the weirdest bars, truck stops and little towns where you meet all sorts of folks. I’ve actually entertained myself sometimes by listening to some crazy racists preaching about their beliefs at clubs, and trying to see where it all comes from. And it sure didn’t help making me understand it any better. So Same Difference is my way of telling these that I’m sure they’d have better things to do with their lives and energy.

A video was recorded for the song Silhouette, will that be the 2nd single here?

Ben: Yes, as it was in Europe as well. Same Difference was kinda like a teaser from the album, with Silhouette being the “proper” single release, with a video to accompany it.

Beneath is being released by The End Records here in the US. What was the selling point for you guys to sign on with them?

Ben: The guys at The End just seemed to got it. That was a very important thing for us: we financed and produced the album ourselves, so that we’d have complete freedom to cherry pick the right people and labels to work with in different territories. It’s not a great feeling when you know that the label working your album is not really even that into it, so we wanted to make sure this would not happen again.

Ben: Besides The End being on the same wavelength, they had an impressive roster of artists and all the right contacts, which of course is important. And they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, haha.

You guys will make your live debut in the US at SXSW. Are you guys excited to finally be playing the States?

Ben: Oh yes. It’s been a long time coming, I’ll tell you that. You gotta remember, all the bands we were into as kids, and the bands who we covered when we were like 14 years old, we’re from the States. For us, the US was THE country for rock music. So of course it’s always been one of the big goals for the band to get over there to play.

Ben: We keep hearing great things about SXSW, so we think Austin is the perfect place to start our project “US Domination” !"

Read the entire interview at this location.